I often trawl through the NYTimes Food & Wine section online for cooking ideas. I like the short videos, the pictures, and the recipes. They seem fairly straight-forward, and I feel that I can trust their seasoning choices. I hit gold when I tried this week’s recipe/video of sous-vide salmon. This is by far my favourite preparation of salmon. The end result, that is, not the process.
Israeli couscous (left), sous-vide salmon (middle), wild rice (left)
For the process takes constant attention. I do not have a self-stirring bath like what they use on Top Chef, so I had to constantly regulate the water temperature manually. This meant removing 2-3 cups of water and adding 2-3 cups of warm-hot water so that the temperature maintained a constant 115F. As I’ve stated several times, my apartment is frigid and it was far too cold to leave the pot on the counter. I tried putting it on the warmer burner of my stove, which slowed down the cooling process slightly, but only slightly. I was replacing water every five minutes. Very inconvenient and quite a waste of water. I got through a similar process on a much smaller scale when I make Wiley Dufresne’s slow cooked egg, but that’s for another post.
2 uncooked salmon fillets, olive oil, and one heavy duty freezer bag
Also, I hate cleaning plastic bags. My parents are environmentally conscious, and often wash out and reuse ziploc bags. Not I. Even the heavy duty freezer bags. I just feel that they never get fully clean and then you have to dry them hanging off of a long-handled spoon or something, which results in water spots and my forgetting them and them getting wet or dirty again so that they’re never ready to go back into the drawer for later use. So I rarely use freezer bags and I use a reusable plastic container for taking sandwiches for lunch. Every time that I make this dish, I will be using and discarding a freezer bag. So it’s bad for the environment.
I had based my shopping list on the video that I’d seen, but then as I was pulling it back up as I was making it, I found the printed recipe, which was significantly more involved. It was clearer in the written recipe that the water bath needed constant attention; based on the video, it looked like you could set it aside and forget about it for 30 minutes, which was not so (well, maybe in the summer). I forgot to get hazelnuts and after my pumpkin spice episode left a cinnamon smell on my Magic Bullet, was reluctant to use it for coriander. I crushed the seeds in a small bowl using the handle of a chef’s knife, and wished I had a mortar and pestle. The seeds were more palatable, but still hard. In fact, the salmon sous-vide-ing took so much effort, that I threw the rest of the recipe out the window and just sprinkled in arbitrary amounts of toasted sesame seeds, crushed coriander, dried ginger, salt, and pepper and gently melted butter. It turned out fine. Better than fine, actually. It was by far one of the best dinners I’ve made in a while. the sort that even after you’ve eaten your fill, you just want to keep on eating and eating. The salmon was buttery, it was silky, it was heaven on a fork. Gentle poaching will give you tenderness, but this method created a superb salmon that left me craving more even as I was eating it. As my husband was slaving over the sink later on, cleaning all of the dishes, I kept thinking back on the succulent salmon, and how I wanted more. But it was all gone, alas, and well enjoyed.
fennel salad, pearl couscous, wild rice, and the most incredible sous-vide salmon I've ever had
To accompany the salmon, I made the last of the Israeli couscous and since I thought that my husband doesn’t like Israeli couscous and there wasn’t quite enough for two who portions, I also made wild rice as well. I had considered making a salad and had bought a fennel bulb just in case. I tasted a small bit of salmon that broke off the larger pieces and was so enchanted with the flavour and texture that I was compelled to make a salad to help show off the perfection of the fish. I hate making salads, and can usually count the number of salads I make in a year on one hand. But the fennel salad was simple, and was basically sliced fennel tossed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Brassierie T! serves their dill salmon with a fennel dill salad that’s fairly similar, though better presented.
After seeing what sous-vide-ing does to salmon, I wonder what it’ll do to other things, like chicken or pork. Or more salmon…mmmm…sous-vide salmon…
